PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to develop a tool to assess the need for child hospice care in families of children with cancer.
METHOD
The research design was a methodological study. The tool was developed in 4 stages : first, preliminary items were developed based on a questionnaire about the needs for child hospice care that was given to 20 families of children with cancer; second, a panel of specialists reduced the number of preliminary items using 3 validity tests for the content; third, final items were selected from the results of a pre-test. Finally, from February to July 2004, reliability and validity were tested with a sample of 104 families who had a child with cancer.
RESULTS
The final tool on the need for child hospice care consisted of 22 items and Cronbach's alpha coefficient for internal consistency was .93. Using factor analysis, 5 factors were extracted and these factors explained 69% of the total variance.
CONCLUSION
The instrument, for assessing the need for child hospice care in families of children with cancer, developed in this study was identified as a tool with a high degree of reliability and validity. In this sense, this tool can be effectively utilized for implementing and improving hospice care for children with cancer.
